Category: Things that make you say hmmm?

Posted on

Another WTF?

I just saw a report about a couple that was needing to renegotiate their home mortgage.

They’re falling behind on their payments.

They’re New Yorkers and their house payment is about 3K a month. I know NY is expensive and I’ve heard of much higher payments on the left coast.

So while the house payment is higher than I’d be comfortable paying I don’t think it’s out of line for an average American Family these days.

If both people are working and they’re not extravagant about their expenditures, then this is a snap shot of “Normal Americans” these days.

The other way these folks are average is that the Husband has been layed off and hasn’t been able to find another job.

So they attended an event by invitation sponsored by the Federal Government that connects Americans in trouble with the banks and seeks to facilitate loan renegotiation under an Obama program.

They were denied a renegotiation.

Why?

Because the wife made too much money!

So let’s recap, Wife Employed, Husband unemployed, behind on bills, behind on mortgage.

The couple wants to honor their debts, & keep their house but they’re NOT eligible to take advantage of a Government sponsored program that would allow them to simply renegotiate their mortgage…

BECAUSE THEY MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY?


WTF?


Isn’t it enough that they’re in serious trouble?

I so totally don’t get it. The banks and the government would rather see a decent hard working couple who’s having a rough patch get foreclosed on, have their credit destroyed, and end up homeless than to take action….

Who does this serve? It sure as hell isn’t “We The People“

This is what Occupy Wall Street should be bitching about!

Posted on

HPV Vacine for Boys? It’s a good idea!

Was reading an article this morning about vaccinating boys against the HPV virus.

The author mentioned that the rate of vaccination for girls was somewhere around 33% (Defined as girls having all three shots). Then the article goes on to say that the vaccination may be a hard sell for boys.
I don’t get it.
If, as statistics suggest 75% to 80% of all adults have been or will infected with HPV then it’s kind of a no brainer to give protection to our kids so that they’ll never have to worry about HPV as adults.
Since transmission goes both ways shouldn’t we be treating this like measles? 
The author points out that the low vaccination rate for girls may have to do with parents not wanting to think about their daughter being sexually active. Wake up morons!
Unless parents are going to put their daughters in a convent…  A simple vaccination is preferable to the alternative. 
The “hard sell” aspect for boys seems to be that HPV appears to be linked to throat and anal cancers. Therefore parents don’t see the need… Especially since their son isn’t gay and won’t be gay.
This view is completely unrealistic, and based on the fallacious argument that missionary sex is the only kind of sex ever engaged in.
We as Americans MUST get past our puritanical (and hypocritical) beliefs about sex.
How many men have not enjoyed a good blow job? Raise your hands… Now go find someone to suck your dick and tell me it’s not a lot of fun.
How many women haven’t had a man go down on them? Raise your hands… Then smack your husband! Women in general like it just as much as men and they deserve it, so men if you’re not doing your woman you need to get down there and eat some pussy!
There is absolutely nothing new in sex. 
Boys have always gone for the record when they figure out how to jack off. 
Most women seem to do the same when they figure out how to please themselves.
Objects and organs of various sizes, have always found their ways into the vaginal, oral, or anal openings of both sexes. 
It’s a fact of life and denial serves no purpose except to insure that sexually active people contract diseases needlessly every day.
My parents don’t need to know all the situations where I’ve been skin to skin with someone. They sure as hell don’t need to know what I was doing after I got home from school!
Thankfully, they had the presence of mind to realize that I was probably going to be just like them…
… I was going to be a horny little fuck & I was going to have an active satisfying sex life.
They were wise enough to make sure that I had all the information necessary to enjoy my sex life without too many complications.
I can’t believe that after 35 years or so we’re still having dumbshit discussions about sexuality in this country. This is not the 15th century… and even then people were going at it as often as they could.
Look around people, there are more humans now than there were even 30 years ago. We do know how that happens, and it’s a sure bet that not every little darling was an immaculate conception. 
People FUCK.  We always have, presumably we always will. 
Realistically would you deny your children the joy, ecstasy, and unrivaled pleasure of having sex with another person? I didn’t think so… 
So why is it so hard for you to make having those experiences as safe as possible? 
Vaccinate, provide all the information your children need to make informed decisions about their sex life. 
Think about it another way, do you want your son or daughter having their first experience thinking something stupid like if they pee right after sex they won’t get a disease or pregnant?
Wouldn’t it be better for you to give them accurate information? Would it have been better for you?
I was lucky and I thank god my parents were forward thinking. They gave me all the information I could use and they did it without being judgemental. All I knew was that Gay, Straight, Bi, or whatever they were going to love me. 
As an aside… Dad, it would have been nice if you’d given me a little more information on jock itch, and creepy crawlies that can infest body hair…
Of course, you couldn’t anticipate everything but you were in the Navy! And the same goes for my beloved stepfather, actually it goes double for you… You were a Marine!
Posted on

Kind of an "OH SHIT" morning.

Was looking at the bank accounts today and thought “OH SHIT”! Time to get some income!

To that end I’ve started a more intensive jobs search. I’m leaning more toward contract positions, preferably short term contracts.

The problem is that here in California it’s a virtual wasteland.

There are some positions but almost al of them are well beyond even my 90 mile one way commuting range.

Yeah… I’m a nutjob so what?

This of course leads me once again to the thought. If I have to move INSIDE California to be close to my job… WHY not move OUT of California entirely?

Perhaps Karma, life, or the universe is sending me a message… you know something like;

GET OUT OF CALIFORNIA!!!

Dunno, I’m a bit thick….

Posted on

Mergerus Interruptus

I was reading this article about the AT&T, T-Mobile mess.

It turns out the T-Mobile is shedding customers on worries ABOUT the merger!

I can’t blame the customers.

If you’re trying to escape the tyranny of AT&T you’re not likely to sign a contract with T-Mobile until you know the outcome of the merger hearings. That leaves you as a customer heading to Sprint or Verizon.

Of course this means that all AT&T has to do to eliminate their competitors is threaten to merge with them.

This does not set a good precedent, there has to be a better system. Rampant mergers and acquisitions have demonstrated time and time again that the customers interests are a very very distant concern.

It’s exactly this kind of think that has sparked the Protests on Wall Street and in cities across the nation.

I’m all for capitalism. However, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ve slipped too far for simple legislation. The corruption goes too deep and reaches from the lowest echelons to the highest offices in the land.  So much is about greed, power, and “I’m going to get mine regardless of who it screws.”

The question is… is there any way to prevent monopolies without destroying capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit?  What’s it going to take for the American People to say stop?

A more interesting question is after we say stop!  How far are we as a people willing to go to enforce our will?

If you’ve been wrestling with these questions, you’re not alone.

Posted on

The Work Saga…

Gather ’round my children and you will hear… (Opps wrong mental channel. Click. Click.)

I’ve mentioned the work situation a couple of times, I figured I’d elaborate on it a bit.

Four years ago I joined the Military Industrial Complex. I did this after having diligently avoided Government / DOD entanglements for my entire professional career.

The draft had ended when I came of age. I registered, but never did military service. I didn’t volunteer because I knew I didn’t take orders well and would probably have spent my term of service in a brig somewhere.

Had I chosen a service it would have been the Marines or the Navy.

I went to work for a government contractor.

I was proud of this decision especially in light of 9/11, our ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and that I could have a chance to contribute to the safety of our troops and by extension our country.

I was even dedicated enough that I took a hefty pay cut, figuring that I was embarking on a career with a company that I’d be able to retire from. Biting the bullet in the short term meant an opportunity for some security, a decent pension, and great healthcare. In short, it was a worthwhile tradeoff given my longer term goals.

At my age I’m looking at the whole retirement thing. I don’t want to be eating cat food and pushing a grocery cart.

A lot of the businesses I’ve worked for in the recent past have not only off-shored much if not all of their work. They’ve used off shoring as a threat to engender fear in the remaining employees about loosing their jobs.

At the same time these companies have systematically reduced benefits, and essentially told the employee suck it!

That’s another story for another time. I will say this… I think off-shoring is tantamount to treason and should be punishable.

If you can fling your business across the fucking Pacific Ocean, you can fling that business to the heartland of America and put our out of work Citizens BACK TO WORK.

At the same time we’d  reduce pollution and our dependency on oil by eliminating commuting.

Apparently this simple logic escapes most of the extremely well educated elite who control government and industry. They’d rather see us all driving Priuses which cost as much as my “Luxury”  German Auto and aren’t nearly as nice or fun to drive.

I digress…

So I bit the bullet and I was good with it. I went to work in a slightly different environment than I was used to. I’ve spent a large part of my career testing software, the difference here was the official nature of the testing.

Things move along pretty well during year one. I even managed to take a vacation! Wow been a while since I had the time or the money to do that.

Years 2, 3, & 4 Just as summer begins, we have all hands meetings. In each of these meetings Management starts ringing this layoff bell. Each year the layoff warning bell gets rung a little earlier.

Each year the employees are asked to take vacation time. The managers explain that by doing this we’ll be protecting each others jobs because vacation pay comes out of a different budget.

The first couple of years people did as requested. After all, it was a team effort and in general we all want to protect each other. The last year we were asked if we could take unpaid time to help out. It was during this time that upper management saw fit to hire an intern.

So lets review, Management says our project is having funding issues and people are going to be laid off. They ask employees to take vacation time and unpaid time off, AND THEY HIRE AN INTERN! WTF?

Needless to say we all said NO Fucking way and all of us stopped pissing our vacations away and taking unpaid furlough days.

Strangely, no layoffs happened. But managers did get their bonuses managers always got their bonuses…which seemed odd.

This year, the layoff bell started ringing very early.

As I mentioned in a previous post this year it was for real, in fact the project that I was working on was effectively terminated. With no other projects to move to… So was I.

The signs of impending doom were all around. Most of the time they were written in flashing neon on the walls.

During the tail end of the project, we were asked to choose between furlough (unpaid) and outright layoff. The higher-ups  wanted us to take the furlough because they thought there might be another project waiting in the wings. I took the furlough because I was hoping for that new project and by doing so I would have medical insurance until Oct 1. 
By the time they finally admitted that there was in fact no new project and that we were really being laid off, management had 3 months to plan for the day. They had time to collect all the information that was necessary to process us all out smoothly and efficiently and yet… They were mostly un-prepared.
This was consistent with the way management had behaved for the entire four years I worked for the company.  While I was hoping that at the end they would have at least done us the courtesy of planning the day, I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that no-one had bothered to train the person handling the exit process.
I no longer have any illusions about why we have 200,000.00 toilet seats, or how more expensive airframes that are still on the drawing board are selected for our military over airframes that are in fact ready and have already been test flown. 
Equally I’ve had a glimpse into the workings and mentality of the military industrial complex, and by extension the government.
For those of you wondering why the government is as much of a mess as it is, I suggest that you rent the movies Pentagon Wars it’s a comedy. 
Unfortunately it is far truer than anyone would like to admit. In particular the descriptions of the characters careers at the end of the movie is worth reading.

I once remarked that if what I was seeing at the company was occurring anywhere outside aerospace/defense industry there would have been heads rolling down the halls.

Of course I was told “this is how we do things…”

My retort was “Doesn’t make it right. “

I’ve learned my lesson, If something doesn’t seem right regardless of assurances like “We’ve always done it this way” I should stick to my guns… attempt to change the process or procedure for the better, and failing that… immediately look for a new job.